


Chivalry

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 21:44:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3149492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five Buri/Thayet ficlets, originally written for Fief Goldenlake Smackdown 2011.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Comfort

**Author's Note:**

> Buri and Thayet's first night on the run.

Buri has been dreading this look on her princess’s face. Beautiful as ever, lovely in despair - lovelier, even, her sadness and the flickering light of the fire lending an ethereal quality to her face – but still, despairing. Buri knows enough to understand that giving up is a greater killer than fighting on, and she might have been raised in the lowlands but she is K’miri through and through, and physically incapable of surrendering while she has a standard to rally round. Now that her mother is dead, now that Kalasin is gone, Thayet is that standard.

She drops more dry wood beside the small fire, and it occurs to her to wonder if Thayet has a standard to rally round.

“Thayet?” Buri says, softly, awkwardly. She doesn’t know what she’s trying to do; what help can she possibly be?

“Mm?” Thayet sighs, and flicks her black hair, a stream of liquid ink in the firelight, over her shoulder. She begins to comb it.

“Let me do that,” Buri says, on instinct. Thayet glances at her in surprise, and obediently hands over the comb. It is elaborately carved and smooth with use, and Buri instantly recognises it as Kalasin’s; of course, Thayet would bring nothing unnecessary. This... this isn’t frivolity or vanity. It’s the gift of a memory, of sitting quietly at her mother’s knee while tangles are teased out of hair and stories are told to keep her quiet.

Buri feels the sting of tears, which are not worthy of her. She has no such memory and she has never wished for one before. Her mother has always been her teacher, and her hair has always been as short as a boy’s.

She kneels behind Thayet, and begins to comb. She has done this only a handful of times before and at first she snags on the tangles, making Thayet jump and hiss. If Thayet were any less patient, Buri is sure that she’d be getting a lecture for her mistakes, but Thayet is patient and Buri learns fast, and this... once you get the hang of it, this is soothing, the run of silky hair under the comb and through Buri’s fingers, Thayet’s shoulders and back straight in front of Buri’s hands, the slender curve of her ivory neck vulnerable, even the little round pearl of bone at the base of her neck where her shoulders join her spine beautiful.

Buri comes awake with a start to realise that her situational awareness is severely compromised and Thayet’s hair is tangle-free. Buri blinks, then pulls a rawhide thong from her pocket and starts to plait it tightly, as her mother used to plait her own, quick and deft without the need for a mirror. Buri has never plaited her own hair, and only ever tried to plait her mother’s hair a few times, so it takes her a while to get the hang of it and she has to have several goes – but she gets there, reaches the end of the (fairly) tight, (reasonably) smooth braid and ties it off.

Thayet unties an apple-green ribbon from her wrist, and hands it over without comment. Buri wraps it round the thong, tying it off neatly too.

“Thank you,” Thayet whispers. There is smoke and salt tear-trails in her voice.

Buri’s instincts are telling her what to do next, even though it feels strange to do this for... well, anyone. But this is Thayet. She knows her well, knows her strengths, her weaknesses, and both have been tested thoroughly today.

Buri wraps her arms around Thayet’s shoulders and pulls Thayet back against her chest, pressing her face into the side of Thayet’s neck, doing her best to blanket her in comfort when Thayet is five inches taller than her, though Buri has broader shoulders.

“It was nothing,” Buri mutters into Thayet’s creamy skin, breathing in the faint herbal scent of the soap the convent used, and selfishly, dangerously, she wishes for enough evenings like this to fill out her whole life.

And make no mistake: Buri intends that life to be _long_.


	2. But

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buri's fifteenth birthday present from Jon and Thayet.

Jonathan pulls the sheet off the stand with a flourish. Thayet smiles.

Buri stares, with wide, silent eyes, and yes, perhaps gaping like a fish a little – she is only fifteen, after all – and does not know whether she hates them, or loves them. 

It’s armour. It’s armour like Buri has never had, because her mother only had her suit and the suit that used to belong to her father, which Pathom grew into. Buri has made do with leather jerkins sewn with metal rings, borrowed helms and luck. None of these have ever let her down, but... 

But. Buri takes a small step forward, as if she cannot believe what she is seeing. How many close calls has she had? How many times has she come too close, how many times has Alanna mended an unnecessary wound? How many times has Raoul fretted over her lack of proper protection, and tried to find spare armour in her size in the stores? It is useless: there is none. Even the smallest squires are taller than her. So this is a useful gift.

But. Buri reaches out and delicately touches the suit, picks up the helm and examines it from all angles. It is beautiful, too. She can see that Thayet had a hand in it, because it is lacquered almost like K’miri armour, and bright red, the Hau Ma colour; who else would have known that? Who else knew Buri’s tribe? And who else would have bought her _Raven Armoury_ armour- well, perhaps Alanna, but it’s too expensive for someone you don’t really know, even considering Alanna’s wealth and the fact that she has fought at Alanna’s right hand. So this is a beautiful, well-crafted gift, given by someone who knows her well.

But. Buri fits the helmet over her head, and it is, of course, perfect. Naturally it is; Thayet likes things just so and from what Buri knows of Jonathan he’s not very different. And there’s the sticking point: this is the perfect gift for a loyal vassal you want to protect. Buri is Thayet’s subject, not Jonathan’s, and they both know it; although the point has never been formally considered, and Thayet and Jonathan act as one in matters of state, Buri doesn’t think that Jonathan dares give her an order. She will not be bought off by him. She will not be pacified, and sweetened, and made docile, because Buri has never, _never_ been _docile_ , and there was a time when she thought Thayet might value that, that maybe, one day a few years in the future, as quiet, private citizens living in Tortall with enough connections and money to keep life comfortable but no crowns to weigh them down- 

But there was a time when Buri could say all that, and that time is long gone. And Thayet is still Thayet, and Jonathan just might be stupid enough not to know what he has given her. There is very little she can say now.

“Thank you,” Buri says, and if her voice shakes a little it is only natural; after all, it is a useful, beautiful, well-crafted gift, given by someone who knows her well. “I... Horse Lords. I don’t know what to say.”


	3. Assimilation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buri and Thayet learn to fit in with the locals. George and Rispah see right through them.

After the desert, Buri goes back to Corus. Thayet is living in rooms in the palace, attended by new ladies-in-waiting, guarded by Tortallan men-at-arms who she has charmed already, and who take pride in protecting their future queen: she doesn’t need Buri. Perhaps she _wants_ Buri, but Buri doesn’t give her a chance to tell her so; she accepts Lady Eleni and Sir Myles’ invitation to stay at their townhouse instead. She has a lot to learn about Corus, about Tortall. She soaks up all the tidbits of important information that Myles carelessly drops because he knows that this fourteen-year-old girl will be Thayet’s dagger hand in the years to come, commits to memory all that Eleni will teach her of Tortallan healing methods, studies maps of Tortall, geographical and political. Most of all, she goes out into the city: by day, with Eleni and Rispah, watching their backs and learning the ways of middle-class merchants, by night, with George, Raoul, Douglass and Sacherell, picking up the violent skills of the Tortallan underworld.

She’s a fast learner, she always has been, and this is vital knowledge. She enjoys some of it, no matter how incongruous she feels, no matter how much she twitches in large crowds, no matter that she sometimes forgets herself and checks her surroundings, suddenly frantic that Thayet is gone. Thayet isn’t gone, of course. Buri hasn’t lapsed. She’s no stupid child. Thayet was never there really there. But all Buri’s training cannot stop her forgetting that she isn’t, though – or perhaps remembering that she should be.

Rispah smiles at her sometimes with sad, knowing brown eyes, and sometimes George ruffles her hair and buys her a drink or a pastry, a kind gesture from out of the blue masked by a smooth excuse that they don’t have apple turnovers in Sarain, and he intends to remedy this deprivation. Every now and then Buri thinks that Myles has an inkling, and of course Eleni has always known, but Buri is sure that no-one else has any idea.

She wanders through the crowds and learns to speak like a Tortallan, dice like a Tortallan, mend like a Tortallan, rend like a Tortallan, and all the time her phantom sense of Thayet, doing the same thing in a different way in that palace on the hill, prickles and spikes. Buri thinks that maybe one day between the two of them they will learn to be Tortallan enough to leave each other behind, breaking the ties of kinship, of friendship, of love; but privately, she doubts it.


	4. Childhood Sweetheart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam feels quite sorry for Buri, really.

Liam worked it out early on. It was obvious to him, so obvious that he couldn’t believe that Alanna and Coram never saw it; but then, Alanna was almost wholly engrossed in him and her search for the Dominion Jewel (and Liam counted it a serious achievement that he ever persuaded her to think about anything else; the woman was absurdly single-minded.) Coram had been a soldier, and should have known better what the exhaustion of fear and adversity could drive young folk to, but then he was also Tortallan and Tortallans could be a little provincial about these things. He would probably have caught the princess and her bodyguard in hours if they had been men, or even if Buri had been slightly older, but as it was he wrote them off as friends as close as sisters.

Liam was not without sympathy for Buri or Thayet. The older girl clearly looked to the younger for comfort and a tenuous link to home, and was so young herself that she hadn’t recognised any deeper feeling than protectiveness and loyalty in Buri’s behaviour. The younger girl was head over heels for her, retaining just enough self-control to understand that Thayet didn’t quite feel the same way and control her awkward displays of affection accordingly, but still burning like a banked fire. 

He was kind to her, insofar as that was possible when they were both on the march and on high alert for danger, and as much as he could considering that if Buri caught him at it she would string him up without thinking twice. He was even kinder after they reached Corus, and Thayet captured Jonathan’s heart with polite reserve and a thin muslin nightgown. After all, he knew what it was like to have Jonathan of Conté come between you and someone you loved; Alanna’s bed had always been tainted with Jonathan’s ghost.


	5. Compare and Contrast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Twenty years later, a family emergency forces a confrontation of sorts.

Buri looks down at Jasson. She knows he knows she’s here; she can see the tension in his shoulders of a man who’s very afraid he’s going to be told he’s done wrong. She can call Jasson nothing other than a man after today’s work, and he’s done far more than anyone would have expected of a sixteen-year-old; but he’s Thayet’s son, for all he’s the living spit of the stupider Conté ancestors, and he can never be brought to believe that he has done right. Buri is personally quite surprised that Nealan of Queenscove managed to keep him out of the room where Sir Merovec’s body lies, candles at its head and foot, but then, the boy always had good instincts.

She clears her throat, and Jasson continues to scrub the greave slowly in sand. It’s shining parade-bright already. She kneels down and takes it from him, putting the lid on the tray of sand and the greave into its proper place. Jasson puts up no resistance, and the look he gives her- well, Buri knows she should not look for Thayet in her children, but that blank shock is exactly the expression Thayet wore after they heard the news of her mother’s death. She reaches out and ruffles his hair, and her hands are calloused and rough but Jasson bends his head like he’s receiving a blessing, his blank face breaking.

“You’ve done everything you could,” Buri tells him.

Jasson worries his lower lip with his teeth, and that is Thayet, too: Thayet as a child, before the Sisters and the warlord’s court taught her poise and constraint. “Sir Merovec’s still dead. If I’d only made him - I should’ve told the herald his armour wasn’t fit, got him disqualified – oh, Mithros, if he’d just listened-“

“He would never have listened,” Buri assures him. “Nonds are pig-stubborn, the lot of them. Mild as milk and sweet as mead, but let them once choose their course and they’ll never let go. And he married a Mindelan. They’re worse.”

“It’s still my fault,” Jasson says, and the semi-silent agony in his bluish eyes brings a young Thayet to life again, young and bereaved and on the run. “I checked his armour. I should’ve known that spot would fold when the lance hit it and stopped jousting. I’m his _squire_! It’s my _job_ to do that! There’s nothing I can do to fix this, _Tanna_ Buri. ”

His accent is unbelievably bad, but his use of the K’miri word for ‘auntie’ strikes at Buri’s heart. She rests her hands on her knees and wonders whether to hug him. She’s always been affectionate towards Thayet’s children, she’s treated them as she would her own, but for a while she was especially close to Jasson, who trailed after her desperately trying not to get in the way and largely failing. Still, once he became a page he found his niche, and his niche hasn’t included Tanna Buri very much. But he’s so like Thayet, and like Thayet, he may not have needed her then but he needs her now, and Buri... will answer. 

“You’ve done everything you can,” she tells him. “You warned him, and he wouldn’t listen. Now Lady Adalie is sleeping, not tearing herself to shreds, because you got Lianne to help her sleep. The children are asleep, because you told them stories. Sir Merovec’s horse is groomed, fed and settled for the night because you did it. Sir Merovec’s armour has been cleaned to the point where it blinds innocent bystanders, a Mithran priest is managing the vigil and the funeral is well in hand.” She makes him look at her. “This is all done because you did it, Jasson. You can’t do any more now. Go to bed.”

“But I can’t,” Jasson says, his voice cracking and squeaking on the last few words. “Sir Merovec isn’t going to wake up again, why should- should- should-“

He can’t get past the last few words. Buri gets over the last six years of quietly friendly but distant relations, and wraps her arms around him. “Hush,” she says, surprisingly softly, rocking him as best she can when he’s a foot taller than her. “Hush. It’s all right.”

“N-no. No it’s not,” Jasson corrects her, and he’s crying.

When he has cried himself out, stupefying himself with tears, she prises herself away from him with difficulty. “Come on, now,” she says. “You’re frightening your mother.”

Jasson looks startled, but allows himself to be pulled off the floor and led outside, back to the royal family’s accommodation, where a bed has been hastily made up for him. Thayet hovers outside, and Buri can see the lines of anxiety on her face. Jasson doesn’t look up, his eyes fixed firmly on his feet, but Buri meets Thayet’s worried, shadowed hazel eyes, and gives the tiniest of nods. Her relationship with Jasson has not been the only one that has cooled a little, over the past few years. It’s the distance so often between them, or the work that consumes them both – well, it’s something, but somehow, they’ve drifted apart.

It hasn’t altered their basic ability to work together, anyway, and between them they get Jasson settled. He’s as pliable as a child, allowing himself to be undressed and put to bed; he doesn’t fall asleep quite immediately, so they wait for him to drop off, Thayet sitting on the bed beside him, stroking his thick, barbarously short hair. Buri remembers when he was a small boy and that black hair grew long almost as fast as his nurses could cut it, thick and silky and perhaps the only physical characteristic he inherited from Thayet (with the possible exception of the straight posture and the nose, which is a strange mix of Jonathan’s and Thayet’s). She remembers putting little braids tied off with red thread and silver beads into his hair, the way her mother had done for Pathom, for luck. She remembers telling him K’miri stories, and those are the stories he told Sir Merovec’s children tonight.

Slowly, those shadowed eyes fall shut, and Jasson’s breath evens out and slows.

“Shall I stay or you?” Buri says quietly. 

Thayet shakes her head. “I’ll be with him in the morning – Lianne and Shinko are sitting up with him tonight. Shinko will be along in a moment.” She gets up silently, trailing her fingers gently across her son’s exposed arm and tucking the blanket over it. Jasson mutters in his sleep and shifts his arm outside the blanket. They both chuckle softly.

“You can’t lead Jasson where he doesn’t want to go,” Thayet says, and smiles in the dim light as she closes the shutters. 

“Not unless you tell him it’s his duty,” Buri answers, and leads the way out of the room, shutting the door softly behind her. “Sometimes he even does that for himself.” She leans against the wall and crosses her arms. “He’s strangely like his mother, that way.”

Thayet’s face falls, and she presses her hands to her face. She looks quite old and tired suddenly in the light of the castle’s torches; battle-weary and exhausted. “Oh, Buri.”

“It’s true enough.” Buri shrugged.

“I fell in love.”

“Yes.” Buri examined her toes. “And you gave up... what?”

Thayet pursed her lips. “A child’s dream.”

Buri gives her a look she has used often on her more importunate subordinates. “A dream you ran across half a continent for, and you gave it up in four months.”

“Time was short,” Thayet says tersely. “And I made the right choice.”

“You made a choice you can live with.” Buri pushes away from the wall. 

“I made the _right_ choice,” Thayet repeats.

“You made _a_ choice.” Buri kicks the floor with her heel. “No-one can fault you for it.”

“You do.” Thayet is sharper than she means to.

Buri shrugs again. “Not really. No. But every moment of those four months, all you’d have had to do is ask, and I’d have come right back and gone back to the original plan. Except you’d convinced yourself... You made yourself believe...”

“I was right. I was _right_.” Thayet twists her hands, walking restlessly back and forth. “Look at what I’ve done; look at what we’ve done, together, Jon and I. So much – labour laws, strengthening the indentured servants’ protections, the Riders, lady knights, two wars won, a major economic recovery, education... And the children. My children.” Thayet glances back at Jasson’s door. “I wouldn’t change my choice, not for anything.”

“But you’ve thought,” Buri observed, examining her scuffed boots. “Haven’t you? Sometimes. You’ve thought about it.”

“Yes.” Thayet straightens and flexes her fingers, and looks up at Buri, chin lifted, every inch a queen. Buri looks back, insolent and loyal as ever. “I’ve thought about it. I’ve thought about peace and quiet and a house in Corus and teaching children, founding schools, and living with you and being safe and happy and calm and _loved_... And I wouldn’t go back, Buri. If I could do it all again, I wouldn’t do a thing differently. Not. A. Thing.”

Her voice has not risen above a soft murmur, still discreet, still controlled, but her words are spoken through gritted teeth. 

“Me neither,” Buri says at last. One corner of her mouth crinkles. “Not now.”

There is a long silence. Thayet’s fingers are twisting, and she is chewing her full lower lip worriedly. “Buri...”

“Hm?”

“Will you... Jasson. If he needs to be away from Corus, if he needs to... to get away... He’s always been close to you.” Thayet tilts her head to one side, mouth twisting grimly. “If I can’t protect him... Buri, there is no-one I can trust like you.”

Buri half-smiles. “Do you even have to ask, Thayet?”

Thayet almost laughs, and presses the back of her hand to her lips. Tears glitter on her cheeks. “No. Oh, Buri. Will he...?”

“He’s hard to break,” Buri reassures her, laying a hand on her shoulder. Thayet turns, and drags Buri into a tight embrace.

Buri flails silently for a moment, deeply surprised. It’s been a long time since Thayet has hugged her. A _very_ long time.

“He takes after his mother that way,” Buri mutters eventually, patting Thayet on the back. “Don’t worry. He’ll be all right.”

That much, she concedes, is probably true.


End file.
